Dr. Tigran Mkrtichev was born on April 6, 1959, in Kalinin, USSR, is a prominent Soviet and Russian archaeologist and art historian specializing in the archaeology and art history of Central Asia. He holds a doctorate in art history and is one of the contributors to the Great Russian Encyclopedia. Mkrtichev graduated from the Department of Archaeology at Tashkent State University in 1981 and continued his studies in the graduate program at the Institute of Art History in Tashkent. In 1985, he defended his candidate dissertation on “The Cosmology of the Ancients and Its Reflection in the Art of Central Asia, 5th-10th Centuries.” He earned his doctorate in 2003 with a dissertation on “Buddhist Art of Central Asia, 1st-10th Centuries.” Since 1985, he has worked at the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, where he has held positions as a senior research fellow, head of the Central Asian Archaeology Department, deputy director general for research, and director of the Roerich Museum, a branch of the State Museum of Oriental Art.
In July 2019, Mkrtichev won an international competition to become the director of the State Museum of Art named after I.V. Savitsky in Nukus, Uzbekistan. His predecessor, Marinika Babanazarova, expressed satisfaction with his appointment. Mkrtichev assumed his duties as director in January 2021. During his university studies, Mkrtichev worked as a laboratory assistant under the guidance of the renowned Soviet art historian Lazar Izrailevich Rempel, which helped shape his broad range of interests in ancient and early medieval Central Asian art, including terracotta sculpture and mural painting. Since 1986, he has focused on the study of Buddhist art in Central Asia and authored a comprehensive monograph on the subject titled “Buddhist Art of Central Asia, 1st-10th Centuries,” published in Moscow in 2002.
Starting in 2009, Mkrtichev began exploring 20th-century Central Asian visual art, focusing on artists such as P.P. Benkov, A.N. Volkov, and A.A. Volkov. Together with E.S. Ermakova, he coined the term “Turkestan Avant-Garde,” which was included in the “Encyclopedia of the Russian Avant-Garde,” edited by A.D. Sarabyanov. He has participated in and led numerous archaeological expeditions at Central Asian sites such as Durmontepa, Varakhsha, and Karatepa in Old Termez, as well as at Sengim-Agyz in Turfan, China. Additionally, he served as the scientific director of the Por-Bazhyn project in Tuva from 2006 to 2007. Mkrtichev has curated or participated in over 20 exhibitions and expositions at various museums, including the State Museum of Oriental Art, the Roerich Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. He is the author of more than a hundred scientific works, including monographs, catalogs, albums, and articles.
Since 2018, Mkrtichev has been a member of the expert council Buyuk Kelajak in Uzbekistan. He is also a founding member of the World Society for the Study, Preservation, and Popularization of the Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan, joining the organization in 2016. As one of the first foreign specialists approached by project leader Firdavs Abdukhalikov, Mkrtichev has attended all congresses of the World Society and contributed to the creation of several books in the series “Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan in the Collections of the World” as an expert and author.
